NOT AN ORDINARY T-SHIRT

They appear to be harmless enough -- a plain black T-shirt adorned with a
simple image of a snowman. The only remarkable thing about the shirt is
that the typical jovial depiction of the holiday character is replaced by a
much more menacing man of snow.

This isn't Frosty we're talking about.

But on first glance, you wouldn't think much about "Snowman" T-shirts made
popular by rapper Young Jeezy, who was propelled to hip-hop stardom by hits
"Go Crazy" and "Soul Survivor" featuring Akon.

Their innocent appearance hasn't stopped the shirts from causing a bit of a
firestorm lately due to the true meaning of Jeezy's nickname, the Snowman.

The snow, in this case, is cocaine or crack, and the nickname hearkens back
to Young Jeezy's days as a drug dealer in his native Atlanta.

Needless to say, the snowman T-shirt took on a whole new significance once
parents and educators began realizing what it actually represented. Some
school districts banned the T-shirts. Anti-drug groups criticized the
shirt, causing its original distributor, Miskeen Originals, to halt
production in November.

But "Snowman" T-shirts live on and continue to be sold around the country,
including here in Fayetteville. They also remain very popular with
teenagers and young adults.

Area urban clothing stores have been selling the T-shirts for about four
months now, and it's pretty common to see the shirts worn around town.

But they haven't become much of a problem in Cumberland County schools, who
were alerted about the shirts by Jimmy Black, the county's head of school
security, about a month ago.

Westover principal Mark Smith said that there's only been a handful of
students wearing the shirts to school. Students are asked to simply turn
the shirt inside-out if they are seen wearing it.

"It's not an issue for us," Smith said.

Said Black: "We're not making a big stink about it. We just want to grab it
at the root before it becomes a problem."

The popularity of the "Snowman" shirts probably has more to do with Jeezy,
one of hip-hop's white-hot superstars, than the drug message it conveys.

"They like it because it's the hot thing out right now," said Rick Daniels,
whose store Underground Station in the Cross Creek Mall, sells "Snowman"
t-shirts. "That doesn't mean that they support what the shirt means or they
want to do something bad. They just like the shirt."

"There are a lot of things that have to do with drugs in rap music," said
Darius Autry, a Lumberton native who just finished his first semester at
Fayetteville State University. "No one really listens to the music for
that. They just like the beat or the hook."

The reverberation of pop-culture style back to school-age children is a
familiar phenomenon, Smith said. Kids want to emulate their heroes and the
things they see everyday on MTV.

"It always trickles down back to the schools," Smith said.

Of course, there have been instances over the years when teenagers have
embraced a particular style of clothing due to sheer irreverence.

For instance, University of South Carolina apparel featuring the word
"Cocks," a shortened version of the university's Gamecocks nickname, was
very popular with high school and college students. A couple of years ago,
South Carolina's apparel distributors began to stop using the shortened
moniker.

You can go into young-adult clothing stores like Abercrombie & Fitch or
American Eagles these days and find an assortment of t-shirts featuring
cheeky sayings and phrases.

One American Eagle t-shirt is supposed to be an advertisement for a
fictional wood-supply company. The shirt is emblazoned with the company's
supposed motto: "Wood is good."

"Kids are going to want to do what they think is cool or what they think is
the latest fad," Smith said. "When I was in school it was about wearing
your sunglasses in the building. We didn't understand why we couldn't do
it, but it was the rule.

"We just want to lay down some parameters for them."